On Sunday, my roommate Melanie slid on a smooth rock and fell onto the ground outside the Hout Bay Market. When my roommates, Dylan and Michelle, and I went to check on her, we discovered that she broke her ankle. We received some help from a woman who was a teacher, and one of the owners of the market helped us get an ambulance and ice for her ankle.

After we got to the hospital, Michelle, Dylan and I told some stories of the injuries we have had.

Michelle told some stories about breaking her arm many times. Dylan told a story about the time he had cracked his head open but got stitches from his dad who was a doctor. At the time, I didn’t have a really good story to tell, since I haven’t broken a bone. After lying in bed for a few hours before falling asleep, I finally remembered a story that I can tell.

During my senior year of high school, I was involved in a serious car accident. The accident could have been completely avoidable, but it happened. While at school we had a bomb threat, so my principal cancelled all after-school practices and activities. I had a baseball practice after school which I would have been at, but it was cancelled. After I got home, I got a message from my friend Cullen, asking if I wanted to go to a bowling tournament with our friends Taylor and Sean. Our friend, Cody, was competing in this tournament and the town it was in was about 25 minutes away.

I was sitting in the backseat behind Cullen who was driving the car. As we were approaching the bowling alley, we were T-boned by a car that ran through a stop sign and slammed into the car directly on my door. I yelled at Cullen to swerve, which he did. Then I lied down on the empty middle seat and put my hands over my head. After the car hit us, our car slammed into a telephone pole directly on the door where Taylor was sitting, she was sitting beside me.

I couldn’t open my door, nor Taylor’s door.

Cullen got out of the driver’s door and Sean got out of the front passenger’s door. Taylor and I had to crawl out of the passenger door, the same one that Sean climbed out of. After all of us got out of the car, I hugged Taylor, who was on the phone and scared. I was a shaken up by the accident and she was too, so that helped me to calm down somewhat.

I looked back at the car, it was totaled, all windows shattered, and there was massive damage done to the exterior. I began to search myself for any major injuries. Much to my surprise, the only injury was a lone cut, less than an inch, on my right wrist. Cullen gave me some tissues to put pressure on the bleeding cut. My friend Taylor and I declined to go to a hospital and we went to our respective homes.

The main thread through all of these stories is the injured person always moves on after the event occurs. For Melanie, it will be a much longer period. It will take 6-8 weeks to recover from her injury. Dylan and Michelle were able to move on after their accidents. Michelle and Dylan still continued to do the same activities they did before their respective accidents. For me, the moment I could move on completely from the accident was when I was driving and I approached an intersection with stop signs and a car didn’t go straight through. I know now that what happened, that day does not happen often. It’s everyday things such as driving through an intersection or stepping onto a stone that you never think could hurt you until it happens.

You can’t think about those things otherwise you won’t be able to move on in life. The incident itself will always be remembered when you recover and it’s a story that will always be told. The cut that was on my forearm has become a scar that I see every day. People have scars from surgery and stitches too. These scars remind us that the past is real and it truly happened.

Some will move on from their injury and continue to do the same thing they did that caused their injury. Some are afraid to move on after injury. Maybe it’s fear of getting hurt doing the same thing again. You can’t dwell on this fear, it’s facing this fear that will help you move on with life. It may take time to face this fear, but once you do it will be a weight off your shoulders. The incident happened and you can’t change it, but it’s moving on that is the major key.

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Tell us: Have you been in an accident or suffered an injury? What happened?